The City of Uvalde released an independent report on Thursday that found local police officers did not violate policy or engage in misconduct during their response to the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School, leading to backlash from parents within the community.
A presentation and open hearing were held on March 7 in Uvalde to explain the findings of the study, which included information about the interviews conducted and the details of the shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Jesse Prado, a retired Austin police detective, conducted the investigation and acknowledged that it took a long time due to the difficulty in acquiring all the necessary information.
“I had a lot of difficulty in gathering all of the evidence, gathering the information that I needed to complete a thorough examination of what these officers did,” he said, as reported by the Associated Press.
The report found that none of the police officers or dispatchers actively involved in the shooting response violated agency policies, and Prado claimed that the officers showed “immeasurable strength” by not returning fire into a classroom with children, per The Dallas Morning News.
Many of the parents who attended the presentation were vocal about their opposition to the findings, arguing that the officers acted incorrectly during the shooting.
Veronica Mata, whose daughter Tess died in the incident, pushed back on the report’s assertions, stating that the officers should be ashamed of themselves for the way they handled the shooting.
“You said they did it in good faith. You call that good faith? They stood there 77 minutes and waited after they got call after call,” she said, per ABC News.
Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter Lexi died during the shooting, also voiced her displeasure with the findings and said the officers chose not to put the children’s lives first.
“They chose their lives over the lives of children and teachers, and there’s no policy change [that] will eliminate their fear,” she said, according to The Texas Tribune.
The report found that no policy violations occurred during the shooting, but Prado did recommend several changes to help prevent similar failures from happening in the future.
Prado recommended that SWAT teams in Uvalde be disbanded and that officers should gain experience by joining a regional team. Additionally, Prado advised that future students not be allowed in classrooms unless the room is secure, per ABC News.
This report comes months after the U.S. Department of Justice released a “Critical Incident Review” (CIR) about the incident, which found that there were “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training” during, before, and after the shooting, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The CIR identified “several stimuli that should have prompted leadership to direct a team to enter the classrooms and engage the subject.”
“Any one of these events should have driven the law enforcement response to take steps to immediately stop the killing per the active shooter protocols and guidance described,” read the report.